Website and social media privacy

Our commitment to your privacy

The Mental Health Complaints Commissioner (MHCC) is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal and health information.

We must comply with a number of laws when dealing with your information, including the Mental Health Act 2014 (the Act), the Health Records Act 2001, the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014, the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.

We will not disclose your personal or health information in a way that identifies you, unless you consent or we are authorised or required to do so by law.

What is covered by this policy?

This policy explains how the MHCC handles your personal and health information as you access and interact with our website and our social media sites.

It covers:

what ‘personal and health information’ means

the information that we collect through our website and social media sites and how we use it

our social media rules

how to contact us for questions, feedback or complaints.

Our separate privacy policy details how and when we collect, use and disclose personal and health information in our work with you.

When following links to other sites from our website, please read the privacy policy for those sites. Please also be aware of the specific privacy policies of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms when using them to interact with us.

What is personal and health information?

Personal information is recorded information that can identify a living person.

Health information is information that can identify a person, including a person who has died, that relates to the person’s physical, mental or psychological health, disability or genetic make-up. It also includes information about the health services provided, or that will be provided, to a person.

What information do we collect via our website and social media sites?

We may collect personal or health information if you provide it to us through our website or social media sites. For example, we will collect information that you provide, if you:

complete our online complaint form

subscribe to receive information from us

participate in an MHCC online survey, event or activity

send a message or comment via our website or to an email address displayed on our website

post a message on one of our social media sites.

What do we do with the information that we collect?

We use and disclose personal and health information:

for the purpose described on our website or social media sites when you provide the information

as needed for the operation, administration or development of our website

in accordance with our privacy policy.

If we conduct an awareness raising activity through social media, we will explain whether or not you need to be identified and how we will use the information.

We only add email addresses and any other contact details that you provide to our mailing list with your consent.

Website data

When you access our website, the following data is automatically recorded by the web server for statistical and system administration purposes:

Your IP address

Your domain name (e.g. yahoo.com, hotmail.com etc.)

The date and the time that you visited our website

The pages that you accessed and the files that you downloaded

The URL (web address) of the last site that you visited before you accessed our website

Your operating system

The type of browser that you are using

We will not attempt to identify you from this data unless we are required to do so by law.

Cookies

Like many sites, our website uses cookies to collect this data. Cookies are small data files that a website can place on a user's hard drive to record and improve aspects of the user's website experience. For example, as well as collecting the above data, cookies can help to ensure online applications and transactions don’t require the user to re-enter information when moving between web pages. In this way, cookies can improve the operation of the website, and make using the site more efficient for the user. Cookies don’t need to identify the user or record any personal information in order to place information on a user’s computer and refer to it later (either in the same user session or during a future session).

The default settings of some website browsers allow some or all cookies, but users can also erase cookies from their hard drive, block all cookies, or be prompted by a warning before a cookie is stored.

Our social media rules

We have house rules that apply to our social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which can be found on our Facebook site. We may moderate or remove content in order to protect a person’s privacy, however, we don’t control these platforms or who can access our sites.

Questions and complaints

If you have a question about this policy, or want to ask us about your personal or health information or make a complaint about how we handled this information, please contact us: